Palestine: A 9-year old boy used as a human shield, olive trees destroyed, school stormed, prisoners tortured & woman attacked

DCI: Israeli troops used a 9-year old boy as a human shield in Ofer jail events

RAMALLAH, (PIC)– The Israeli occupation forces on February 17 forced a young Palestinian boy at gunpoint to walk among them as they were attacking Palestinian protestors outside Ofer prison in Ramallah, according to a report issued by defense for children international (DCI).

Mustafa Wahdan, a nine-year old boy, told DCI that he was on his way home from his elder brother’s car wash service, about 300 meters from Ofer jail, when the clashes heated up, forcing him to take shelter in a nearby store as result of the intensity of tear gas.

Some Israeli soldiers, who saw him enter the store, went to detain him and ordered him to raise his hands behind his back, exploiting him as a human shield for several hours as they were firing tear gas grenades and rubber bullets at stone-throwing protestors.

“Whenever they wanted to fire tear gas or bullets at the protesters, they would take me with them. I was very scared that I could be hit with stones or anything else,” Wahdan elaborated.

“At home, Mustafa still feel very scared because of the experience he underwent,” the father of the boy Mohamad Wahdan said.

“He was silent and did not have his dinner that day. In the morning, my wife told me that Mustafa was shaking while he was asleep,” the father added.

The DCI stated that the use of human shields is prohibited by the international humanitarian law, and involves the forced presence of civilians to shield an area or soldiers from harm or forcing civilians to directly assist in military operations.

Local sources reported that some F-16 jet fighters flew at high altitudes over Gaza late on Tuesday night, causing loud sonic booms.

These Israeli overflights took place after Israeli sources claimed that a grad rocket fell in Ashkelon city. However, the Hamas-affiliated government in Gaza categorically denied that any resistance faction had launched any rocket attack on Israeli targets.

Civilians in Gaza had expressed fears that these overflights would be the start for a new spate of deadly aerial raids on their populated areas.

Apart from the claims about the rocket attack on Ashkelon, Israel has violated several times its truce agreement with the Palestinian factions in Gaza, killing four Gazans and wounded about 80 others in gunfire incidents since an Egypt-brokered armistice took effect on November 21, 2011.

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IOA chops down olive trees in Shufat

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– The Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) chopped down olive trees in Shufat land threatened with confiscation north of occupied Jerusalem.

The IOA-controlled municipality of Jerusalem cut off those trees on Tuesday in preparation for constructing road 21.

The Israeli antiquities authority launched a campaign of digging in the area to make sure that no ancient relics were underground before starting the infrastructure building.

The targeted land lot is 8.5 dunums in area and is owned by Abu Nee Hamdan family that has documents to prove its grandparent’s legal ownership of the land.

Issam Al-Abbasi, the secretary of the school’s parents council, said in a press statement that the school administration refused to allow the soldiers, who barged into its yard in big numbers, to enter the buildings.

He said that 1000 students study in the school in the seventh to the ninth grade.

He urged human rights groups to intervene and prevent the repeated storming of schools at the hands of those forces.

Abbasi said that undercover agents and soldiers routinely attack students while on their way to school in Silwan, noting that a teacher was arrested last year for trying to prevent soldiers from arresting a student.

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Three Palestinian prisoners transferred to hospital

RAMALLAH, (PIC)– The Palestinian prisoner’s society said that three Palestinian prisoners were taken from the Israeli Raymond jail to Soroka hospital on Tuesday after deterioration in their health condition.

The society said that the prisoner Maysara Abu Hamdiya, who suffers from throat inflammation, weight loss, and swelling in the glands, was rushed to hospital along with Nahed Khamash, who suffered a stroke, and Issa Jabarin, who suffers kidney diseases.

Tension is running high in all Israeli jails after Palestinian detainee Arafat Jaradat died under cruel interrogation last Saturday.

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Occupation re-arrests ex-prisoner liberated under exchange deal

GAZA, (PIC)– Palestinian Prisoners Center for Studies confirmed that the occupation ruled that ex-captive Mahmoud Taym from Nablus, liberated under Wafa al-Ahrar deal, will be jailed for 10 months, to complete his previous prison term.

Lawyer Mustafa Azmouty told PIC that Salem Military Court has sentenced yesterday the captive Taym to 11 months of imprisonment. He was sentenced to 10 months as completion of his previous sentence, before his release under the exchange deal, in addition to one month for entering the 1948-occupied territories without the occupation permit.

Mahmoud Taym was serving a prison term of 34 months, before being released under Wafa al-Ahrar deal after 24 months of imprisonment. The occupation re-kidnapped him 3 months ago, and imposed on him to serve the rest of his prison sentence.

Director of the Palestinian Prisoners Center for Studies, researcher Riyad al-Ashqar, said in a press statement on Tuesday that Taym was not the only liberated prisoner who was re-arrested by the occupation.

Ashqar warned of this dangerous procedure, which aims to re-arrest the ex-prisoners who had been liberated under the prisoners exchange deal, and stressed that the silence and inaction regarding these Israeli abuses encourage the occupation to continue its criminal policies against the liberated captives.

At least 14 other prisoners exchanged for Shalit were rearrested, Ashqar revealed, demanding the Egyptian sponsor to intervene for their release.

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Ex-prisoners assert they were tortured in Israeli interrogation centers

NABLUS, (PIC)– Palestinian liberated prisoners asserted that the Israeli authorities have been practicing brutal torture and tyranny against them during interrogation.

MP Sheikh Mohammed Jamal Natsheh, a leading figure in Hamas movement from al-Khalil who was arrested in December 1990, told PIC that he had been subjected to different forms of torture in the Moscobiya interrogation center in Jerusalem.

He said that among the methods of torture used by the Shin Bet is to deprive the prisoner from sleeping, noting that he had been deprived of sleeping during the interrogation for nearly three weeks.

The liberated captive Dr. Adnan Abu Tabana, 50 from al-Khalil, was also subjected to interrogation during his arrest in 2002 in the Jalama interrogation center, as he confirmed that the interrogators tortured him during the interrogation.

He stated that one of the forms of torture used at the Jalama center is that a burly investigator comes in during the investigation and begins to violently shake captive until he loses consciousness. Dr. Abu Tabana noted that this form of torture affects the spinal cord and may lead to death.

Dr. Abu Tabana added: “Due to this kind of torture the prisoner Abdul Samad Ehrizat, from al-Khalil, and many other captives died”.

Following the international protests that condemned the occupation because of this torture; the Shin Bet started in March using another form of torture, which is psychological torture, under which the Shin Bet holds the Palestinian prisoner in a very small closed cell (of 80 cm × 150 cm) for three continuous months, isolated from the rest of world, without even being able to see the sun.

Thousands of Palestinian prisoners have been subjected to this form psychological pressure, which enabled the Israeli interrogators to forcibly extract confessions.

Tuesday February 26, 2013, A Palestinian woman from occupied Jerusalem was attacked, on Monday afternoon, by a number of extremist Jewish women who tried to remove her hijab, as she was waiting at the Train Station in Jerusalem.
Israeli Hebrew-language daily, Maariv, published pictures of the women as they assaulted the Arab woman and tried to remove her hijab covering her hair.

The attack took place at the light rail station in Kiryat Moshe in Jerusalem, the Arab woman tried to defend herself, but the Israeli women kept attacking her and managed to remove her veil.

Maariv said that an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman walked by the Palestinian woman and punched her, before some of her friends participated in the attack, and started beating the woman. Eyewitnesses took pictures the attack.

Maariv also reported that, after it published the news about the attack, the Israeli Police opened an investigation into the issue.

Dorit Dotan, an Israeli peace activist who witnessed the attack, stated that a security officer working for the Jerusalem Municipality just watched the assault and smiled.